Tag Archives: Social media

Seems that Google is rolling out some additional features for Google+ today, and that the ‘limited field trial’-fase is over. As of today Google+ entered ‘open bèta’, so invitations to jump aboard are no longer required. Everybody can sign up! Woohoow!

So maybe you’ve noticed that “Follow me on G+“-button in my sidebar and wondered: What the hell is G+? Or maybe you know what it is but can’t stop wondering: why G+ and no Facebook? Everybody is on Facebook!! Well, for those who didn’t know yet: it is indeed kinda like Facebook, but then again somewhat different. Different in, for me anyway, some crucial ways.

Unlike 750 million other people on this planet I’ve never made it to Facebook. From the beginning I wasn’t really interested in putting my personal life in the open. I’m the kind of person that wants control over what I share, and with whom. Of course, Facebook is based on the concept of mutual friendship for sharing, but I saw how the friendlist of many just kept on growing. You can’t keep on ignoring that friend-request of your aunt Zulma can’t you? Or you would’t want to insult your boss at work by holding him off either. That way the friendlists of “many-a-poor-boy” turned into a melting pot of different relationships and the sharing thing became a lot trickier. You don’t want to share those party-pictures with your mom don’t you? Or even your future employer? Besides that I started hearing my friends getting frustrated with the amount of junk that is coming through their stream because of that bulky friendlist. Naah, that Facebook-thing was not my cup of tea.

But then again I felt I was missing out on a lot of cool things too. Twitter is nice to keep up with some stuff or people, but is also very limiting. So I almost made the jump to facebook, and then came Google+.

What I really like about it is their concept of circles. It lets you organise your friends in groups in a very easy-pleasy way, and because of that you get the complete control over what you share with who. Moreover, you can filter your stream to show only what interests you. This video below shows what I mean:

Being a photographer however, and the reason why I post this on a photography-blog, is that Google+ treats pictures oh so nice. The galleries on Google+ look so much better than on Facebook. Because of this very reason many photographers made the jump to G+ already and you can find the top of the photography-bussiness out there. All within your reach because you can connect with them right away! Really cool.

Want in on the fun? Google+ is still in “limited” field trial, so you have to get an invitation. But as a G+user I get to hand out 150 invitations, so if you want one: just let me know by commenting or through the contact page.

Greetingz,

Sebastiaan

PS: UPDATE => not even a week later Google pushed out some updates and additional features, but more importantly left the limited field trial behind them.(Google’s anouncement)